Cassy was hardly in any shape to deal with Deidre Marshall, but, she thought, anything was an improvement over continuing that talk with Henry. She swung open the front door just as she thought she should have peered through the peephole first.
It was Alexandra Waring.
Rubbing her eye, Cassy had to laugh to herself.
Alexandra shifted her stance slightly. “I told them I was tired,” she said.
“You came to the right place, then,” Cassy said. “We always are here.”
The brilliant eyes were asking for mercy and it threw Cassy. What was up?
“May I come in for five minutes? There was something I wanted to say to you.”
“To me?”
Alexandra nodded.
“Well,” Cassy said, stepping back and waving her in, “I suppose you’d better come in and say it then. Let’s go in the living room.”
It fascinated Cassy how nervous the girl was. Offered a chair, she declined, choosing instead to pace the floor with her hands jammed into the pockets of her raincoat. Cassy sat down on the couch and watched her. Alexandra looked over at her once or twice but continued to pace.
This was to be the woman to launch a thousand broadcasts? Tell of earthquakes? Assassinations? Terrorism? Fatal diseases? This was Michael’s Wonder Woman? Well, Cassy would be kind. She would assume that Alexandra could do better sitting behind a desk.
The girl finally said, “I want to apologize and I’m not exactly sure what I’m apologizing for, since I haven’t done anything wrong.”
Cassy lofted her eyebrows.
The girl started to pace again, stopped, and suddenly threw herself down on the end of the couch, to which Cassy reacted by crossing her legs in the opposite direction.
“There’s no other way to say it, so I’ll just say it. I’m terrified of your husband, of offending him, because I desperately want this assignment to work.” She ran her hand through her hair and dropped it in her lap. “Tonight was a nightmare and I couldn’t stand watching what was happening, but I couldn’t do anything either— can you understand that?”
Somewhere, perhaps between the words “terrified” and “desperately,” a gray veil had dropped over Cassy’s head, shielding her from any sense that this conversation was actually taking place.
Alexandra sighed, lowering her head for a moment. Cassy noted how gorgeous her hair was. No gray. Nothing but black, thick, wonderful young How crazy it must make Michael.
Are you having an affair with my husband?”
Alexandra’s head kicked up. “God, no,” she whispered. “Never. I wouldn’t do that—”
Cassy shrugged. “Thought I might as well ask.”
“I’m very fond of your husband,” the girl said. “I’m also very loyal to him. You of all people must realize the enormity of the opportunity he’s giving me.”
Cassy nodded. “Yes, I do.”
“So you can understand how difficult my situation is.”
Cassy sighed, looking past her to the window. A barge was making its way down the river.
“Tonight, when I saw you—” Alexandra said, voice hesitant. “I’ve heard about you, your career— people told me how beautiful you are—
“If you think I’m beautiful now, you should have seen me before.
“So when I saw you tonight,” Alexandra rushed on, “I knew at once that something had to be terribly wrong if he—” She cut herself off. “Oh, God, I’m sorry— this is coming out all wrong— “
Cassy held a hand up for her to stop. “Look, Alexandra, I appreciate what it is you’re trying to do— “
“But I can’t do anything, that’s the point—”
“Please, listen to me for a minute, will you?” The girl leaned back against the arm of the couch. It was a good move, Cassy noted, the way she had posed herself. The way Alexandra looked at this moment was enough to make Cassy want to slash her wrists to put an end to this curse of middle age once and for all. “In my day, if you got anywhere in news—really, anywhere in almost any profession, women were always accused of sleeping their way there.” She laughed slightly. “And I did—I was married to Michael and he was my boss. Did you know that?”
“He’s told me everything about you,” Alexandra said, faint smile emerging. “He talks about you a lot.”
Cassy nodded. “Okay. Well, the only point I want to make is that all women, particularly beautiful women, sooner or later have a Michael making their lives difficult. The fact that it is my husband, I can’t—I won’t— “
“Of course not. I can handle him—it—that,” Alexandra said. “What’s difficult is just what you said—about being accused of sleeping...” She sighed, running her hand through her hair again. She looked at Cassy. “Everyone thinks I’m sleeping with him— and that’s why he brought me to New York.”
Cassy rubbed her face, thinking, Lord, what must I look like? “If I were you,” she said, lowering her hands, “I would just go on doing what you’re doing and let them think whatever they want. Alexandra— they’re going to think whatever they want to think anyway. No matter what you do. I think you know that.”
Alexandra lowered her eyes. “I care what you think,” she said. “That’s why I came back.”
Michael, you’d be crazy not to want to marry this girl. Either she was a first-rate liar, or she was a nice girl from Kansas. “I think—” Cassy began, starting to smile. Alexandra met her eyes. “If you’re half the person on air that you are right now, you’re going to be just fine.”
“Thank you.” It was scarcely a whisper. They were still looking at each other and Alexandra suddenly pulled her eyes away.
“Alexandra— “
The girl started.
Either Cassy was seeing things, or the nice girl from Kansas was blushing. “I was just going to say that a friend of my son’s is here, who’s sick, and I’m rather tired and I think you are too...”
“Yes, of course,” Alexandra said, rising.
In the kitchen they found Henry with his head in the refrigerator. He jerked back, first looking at Alexandra and then to his mother.
“It’s okay, sweetheart,” Cassy said.
“Henry,” Alexandra said, going over and shaking his hand, “I hope I see you again one day soon. When it’s a little less rowdy.” Pause. A gesture to Cassy. “Your mom and I were just talking—well, she’ll tell you.”
Henry looked to his mother and Cassy nodded, smiling.
“I’m just going to see Alexandra to the door.” Cassy led the way through the front hall. “Well, it’s been quite a day,” she said, opening the door.
“Yes,” Alexandra sighed, stepping outside the door and turning around.
Cassy held out her hand and Alexandra shook it. “Thank you, Alexandra. You’re a very courageous young lady.”
Alexandra smiled.
The ratings have just soared in the tri-state area.
“Thank you for being so nice,” Alexandra said. She let go of Cassy’s hand, walked down to the elevator and pressed the button. “Will I see you again soon, do you think?”
“Well,” Cassy said, hanging on the door, “I’ll be seeing a lot of you. We tend to watch a lot of news around here.”
“Great,” Alexandra said.
“Good night,” Cassy said, closing the door.
“Good night.”
Cassy locked the door and leaned against it. And then, after hesitating a moment, she ventured a look out the peephole. He won’t give up on this one, she thought.
2
THE STEWARTS
Howard heard the front door of the apartment slam. “Hi, Rosanne,” he called, pouring the rest of the water into the coffee maker.
“Hi.” Swish, swish, swish; the familiar sound of Rosanne’s jeans. Silence.
Howard looked over his shoulder and saw her leaning against the doorway. “You look very tired,” he said, moving over to the butcher-block table. “You got it.” She let her bag slide down off her shoulder to thump o
n the floor. “Party at the C’s last night.”
“Okay,” Howard said, picking up a piece of paper and examining it, “I’ll strike ‘windows’ off of Melissa’s list.” He leaned over the table to pencil in “next week.”
Rosanne tossed her bag up onto the counter and adjusted her bandanna to a more pirate-y angle. “Been on the list for three years,” she said, “you’d think she’d catch on.”
Howard smiled, pushing his glasses up higher on his nose. “Melissa doesn’t like to admit defeat.”
Rosanne gave him a look and moved on to the refrigerator. “You oughtta get a medal or somethin’,” she said, opening the door.
Howard let the comment pass. “I got some half-and-half—it’s in the door.”
“Great, thanks.”
“And there’re some bran muffins in the breadbox.”
Rosanne closed the refrigerator door and walked over to the coffee maker. Tapping her fingers on it, trying to hurry it along, she said, “So how are ya?”
Howard tossed the pencil down on the table. “Good, I guess.”
“I brought that book back,” Rosanne said, reaching for her bag.
“What did you think?”
Rosanne pulled it out and handed it to him. “I liked it. I liked it a lot, only—”
Howard was looking down at the jacket of the hard-cover volume of a Reader’s Digest Condensed Books. “Only what?”
“I don’t know, Howie,” she sighed, swinging her weight to one leg. “Like I don’t know if it’s so good for me to be readin’ romances. Kinda gets me depressed after—it’s not like it’s like real life or nothin’.”
“Well,” Howard said, considering this.
“But I liked it okay,” she finished. “And I read another one in there about the family movin’ out West—gettin’ shot at and attacked and all.” She moved over to the sink. “Weird how it was like now back then.”
Howard laughed. “I’ll give you something a little different this week,” he promised.
Rosanne opened the cabinets under the sink and squatted down. “Yeah, okay,” she said, pulling out various cleaning agents and plunking them down on the floor. She shook the bathroom cleanser container. “We need some Comet, Howie,” she said. Howard wrote this down. “And you better tell her highness,” Rosanne added, whipping her head around in his direction, “that we don’t want any of that el cheapo cleaner she always gets.”
“Brother,” she muttered, standing up and slamming the cabinets shut, “you’d think if she wanted a clean house she’d get some decent cleanin’ stuff.”
“I’ll get it,” Howard said, dropping the pencil.
Rosanne turned around to look at him.
“What?”
Her mouth twitched one way and then the other. “Nothin’,” she finally said, waving him away. “Go do your work. I wanna listen to the radio.”
As Howard walked through the living room he heard Rosanne whirling the radio dial. In a few minutes, he knew, every radio and television in the apartment, save in the master bedroom, would be on (9 A.M., Radios: Howard Stern (WXRK), John Gambling (WOR), Don Imus (WNBC); TVs: Leonard Philbin and “The Munsters.” 10 A.M., Radios: K-Rock, Sherre Henry (WOR) and WPLJ; TVs: Oprah Winfrey and Phil Donahue). At eleven, while Rosanne cleaned their bedroom to Joan Hamburg (WOR), Howard would move to the living room for a half hour and either turn off the TV or give in and watch “Father Knows Best.”
In the beginning, Howard had stayed home on Monday mornings to read manuscripts as an accommodation to Melissa to have someone home while Rosanne was there. Melissa was still under the impression—kept there, quite deliberately—that these mornings were of enormous inconvenience to Howard when, in fact, they were often the best times of his week.
Howard settled down into Melissa’s pink chaise longue and picked up the remaining unread part of a manuscript that had been submitted to him at the office.
It was not holding his attention, however, and in a moment he was staring out the window at the Hudson River.
Howard Mills Stewart was thirty-three years old and in perfect health. He had been married for eight years, was living in a fabulous three-bedroom apartment, was an esteemed editor at Gardiner & Grayson, one of the most famous publishing houses in the world, and yet—
And yet... Why, he wondered, did he feel so terribly unhappy? So lonely. So utterly lost.
When twenty-two-year-old Howard Stewart joined the training program at Gardiner & Grayson Publishers, Inc., in 1975, to say that he was unprepared for the world of book publishing is putting it mildly. Nothing he had studied at Duke, nothing he had imagined as a teenager in Columbus, Ohio, had seemed to be of use to him. No, that was not quite correct. There was one thing he had brought along with him that was of enormous value: to so love reading, to so love books, that not even book publishing could scare him into seeking another means of employment.
When he had arrived in New York City—at the Chelsea apartment he shared with no less than five other recent college graduates—Howard had no doubts that he would discover great writers and nurture them to staggering heights of critical success. It would take him about a year, he thought. He even had a list—in his head—of the kind of writers they would be: a Charles Dickens; an Edith Wharton; an F. Scott Fitzgerald; a John Cheever; and a John Updike. And so, when he arrived at Gardiner & Grayson for his first day of “training,” he was rather taken aback by being asked to type some three hundred mailing labels to send out review copies of books.
When the publisher, Harrison Dreiden, recruited Howard to work as an assistant in his office, everyone told Howard how lucky he was. Howard wondered. Could book publishing really be like this? As far as he could make out from the vantage point of his desk, no one in the office ever read or ever edited. All that seemed to go on were phone calls, typing and meetings, meetings, meetings and more meetings.
“What exactly is it that you do all day?” Howard once asked a senior editor. She had thrown her head back and laughed.
“Okay, Howard,” she said, checking her watch, “I will give you a one-minute summary of an editor’s job. Ready?”
Howard nodded.
“The editor represents the house to the author, and the author to the house, right? Okay then, lesson number one: the editor is responsible for absolutely everything to absolutely everybody.”
“Got it,” Howard said, a trifle annoyed with this simplicity.
“And it means that the editor has to make sure that everyone working on the book in house does his or her job, even though the editor might be the only one who’s read it.”
Howard frowned.
“So the editor is in contact with everybody who is working on the book: the author, of course, and the agent on the outside, and on the inside, well”—a deep breath—”the managing editor, the business manager, production coordinator, design, copy editing, the art director, sub rights—reprint, book clubs, serial and foreign rights-marketing, publicity, advertising, the flap copy writer, the sales manager, royalty department, the sales reps”—breath—”and that’s when everything’s going smoothly. Otherwise there’s the legal department—”
“So you talk to them all the time?”
“That or we memo each other to death.” Pause. “And that’s only one book—I’m usually working on six to eight books at the same time, with a new list starting every six months. But I won’t have anything to work on unless I get out there”—a wide, sweeping gesture to the window—”and find good books to sign up.”
“Oh,” Howard said, his frown deepening. “So when do you edit? I mean, do you?”
Another burst of laughter. “Of course I do. Oh, Howard,” she said, patting his shoulder, “you’ll find out. Publishing isn’t a career, you know, it’s a calling. In this house it is, at any rate. But don’t worry—either you’ll get it or it will get you.”
Howard’s phone calls and letters back to Columbus did not paint an accurate picture of his life in New York. The truth, h
e felt, would only upset those who had taken an interest in him early in his life, who had done great favors for him, believed in him, and expected great things of him.
Howard’s dad, Raymond, was born the year the Stewarts lost the two thousand-acre plantation in North Carolina that had been in the family for over a hundred and fifty years. The Depression was on, and the Stewarts moved to Ohio in search of work. When Ray was nineteen, working as a fence builder, he enticed a freshman at Ohio State by name of Allyson Mills to elope with him. Allyson was the daughter of a prominent Shaker Heights attorney. At her urging, Ray worked for his father-in-law as “the highest paid filing clerk in the world” until he couldn’t stand it anymore, quit, and took his bride to the outskirts of Columbus to start a landscaping business. Howard’s dad was sort of, well—yes, he was at home with a shovel, but no, not with a necktie. And Howard’s mom, devoted to Ray, decided she was happy if he was happy and, since he seemed to be, learned how to function in the capacities of the servants she had grown up with.
This was not to say that Ray Stewart did not have high hopes for his eldest son. The trick was how to give Howard every opportunity without accepting any help from his father-in-law (Allyson, too, was eager to do this). The Stewarts had a lot to work with. People liked Howard, they always had. He was acutely bright, good-looking, athletic, and just—just such a great guy. The kind of guy who fit in anywhere, never claiming to be any better or worse than who he was with.
Ray’s friends were local small business owners like himself, forever involved in—and rallying together to protect their interests in—the Chamber of Commerce and the Rotary Club. And all of Ray’s friends seemed to see something in Howard they wished to help along. When Howard proved to be good in Little League, he was given a job sweeping out a sporting goods store and got his pick of the best equipment available for any sport that interested him. When Howard was twelve, he was slipped in with the union caddies at a country club. When he was fourteen he earned high wages (under the table) building tennis courts. When he was sixteen, he bought himself a red Camaro (at cost, from yet another friend of his father’s) to drive himself around to the suburban estates where he gave private tennis lessons to wealthy ladies bemoaning their backhands. The ladies adored him. (“You are so kind, Howard,” Mrs. Lane said once, handing him a twenty-dollar tip. “You make me feel as though everything’s going to be all right, even my tennis.”) And the husbands trusted him. (“She hasn’t had a martini before five all summer,” Mr. Lane said, handing him a two-hundred-dollar bonus.) When one of his dad’s friends built an indoor tennis complex, Howard was hired part time and his summer clientele followed him.
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